


Sky Full of Song

by Dredfulhapiness



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Human Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, Minor Violence, Season 9 Rewrite, cas has a well-adjusted friend and it's good for him
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29644443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dredfulhapiness/pseuds/Dredfulhapiness
Summary: Cas isn’t sure what to expect from Garth, but nothing prepares him for the man that pulls up in a shambling coupè.Actually, he hears him before he sees him. Far louder than the struggling engine is the jumping beat of a hip hop song.He steps out of the car and he’s all gangly limbs. If it weren’t for Dean’s referral, Cas would never be able to guess Garth is a hunter. Even the way he carries himself, thick with misplaced confidence, is miles different from the hardened esteem of the Winchesters.Or, Cas lives with Garth after he gets kicked out of the bunker
Relationships: Castiel & Garth Fitzgerald IV, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 24
Kudos: 123





	Sky Full of Song

  
  


Cas isn’t sure what to expect from Garth, but nothing prepares him for the man that pulls up in a shambling coupè. 

Actually, he hears him before he sees him. Far louder than the struggling engine is the jumping beat of a hip hop song. 

He steps out of the car and he’s all gangly limbs. If it weren’t for Dean’s referral, Cas would never be able to guess Garth is a hunter. Even the way he carries himself, thick with misplaced confidence, is miles different from the hardened esteem of the Winchesters. 

“Hey!” He calls out just as Cas is raising his hand to wave. “Castiel?”

“You must be Garth.”

Cas holds out a hand, but Garth pulls him in for a hug instead. Cas returns it stiffly. “It’s so nice to meet you, Man,” He says as he pulls away. “Dean talks about you all the time.”

Cas blinks. “He does?” 

“Oh, yeah. Constantly.” Garth nods back toward his car, and Cas follows him. “I’m gonna set you up in my guest room. There’s a TV in there, I get HBO. Oh! And the mattress is brand new for you.” 

“Okay,” Cas says. 

“We’re about two hours out from my place,” Garth explains. “You have to go to the bathroom before we go?”

“I--” Cas shakes his head. “No. No, I’m okay.”

The back seat of Garth’s car is covered with books, all in different stages of life, but all in good condition. There’s one open on the passenger seat, too, face down, 

“Oh, hang on,” Garth says. He grabs a receipt out of the glove compartment and closes it in the book, then he (with more care than Cas had anticipated) places it among the pile of buckled-in books. 

Garth is… A lot. He’s got a personality larger than his frame, and he uses it to fill in the silence.

Thankfully, he turned the radio down when Cas got in the car. Cas can still hear the music bopping just under the sound of Garth telling him about his friend Timmy, who he met “way back in middle school”, and who’s just gotten married. 

He speaks about him the same way the Winchesters speak about Charlie, with a thick underlying sense of pride. 

He speaks about most people that way, Cas finds out eventually. Dean and Sam, Kevin--

“He needs to learn to slow down,” Garth says. “I tried to get him to take some breaks, but…” He trails off and makes a noncommittal hand motion that reminds Cas of Dean. It’s so casually aloof, so out of place with Garth’s demeanor. It’s like a flare. 

“The last time I spoke to Kevin he needed to be convinced to continue working,” Cas recalls, and Garth tilts his head. 

“He’s a kid,” He says. “You know, at his age I was doing anything to get out of doing homework.”

“This isn’t homework. It’s decoding the word of God.” 

“You think that makes a difference to teenagers? If kids had any sense of perspective there wouldn’t be fights in high schools.”

Cas stares at him, and Garth shrugs.

“Teens don’t… They don’t understand the difference between a big thing and a little thing. Acne, the SAT, closing the gates of Hell-- it all carries the same weight. That’s not their fault. His mom is missing, his life’s screwed up, he wants to be done. It doesn’t matter if it’s  _ practical.”  _

“It  _ isn’t  _ practical,” Cas says. Garth clicks his tongue.

“How long have you been around?” 

“In human time, I’m around four hundred million years old.” 

“Well, see, there you go. You have so much experience to help put things into perspective. He’s only been around for--” He pauses, mouths to himself, then says, “Less than half a percentage of your lifetime. You gotta cut him some slack, y’know?” 

Cas’s interactions with Kevin have been limited to moments of duress. If he had to give a name to his attitude, he’d say he’s insubordinate at best. Selfish, at worst. After all, he’d somehow deemed his own personal mission to get drunk off of the bunker’s whisky more important than translating the angel tablet. 

Then again, if his crime is undermining other people’s priorities, maybe Cas wasn’t in the position to be criticizing him. Look where it had landed him: human and banished. 

“You getting hungry for lunch?” Garth asks.

Cas’s stomach growls in response.

\--

They end up at a restaurant that advertises itself on how country it is. Country meaning, apparently, wooden furniture and trinkets covering every inch of available wallspace. Based on Garth’s reactions when they walked in, it prides itself on selling snacks from his grandfather’s childhood. It’s not busy, and they’re able to get a seat in a corner near the emergency exit which puts Cas slightly at ease. A quick getaway means, at least, less casualties. 

“How  _ are _ you feeling?” Garth asks from over the top of his glass of sweet tea. “About the whole being human thing?”

Cas frowns at him and pokes at a suspiciously soft French fry. “I feel healthy,” He reasons. “Ever since I died I’ve felt fine.”

“No, I mean, like, emotionally,” Garth corrects. “I’m sure this is a hell of a change. How are you  _ feeling?” _

Cas blinks. 

No one else has asked him that. He hasn’t even really had a chance to consider it himself. Between run-ins with angels and finding safe places to sleep, the most he’s been able to afford is a general frustration over the fact that—

“Being human is…” He weighs his words carefully. “Overwhelming. All of this--” He looks between the food and the sign for the restrooms. “I’m not used to how demanding it is to be alive.” 

Garth nods, regards Cas with a look that isn’t pity. Isn’t, as he has seen too often, confusion. It’s something of understanding, of care. Garth sips his drink and nods his head, and when he speaks he doesn’t look like he’s painfully trying to force the words from his mouth. 

“That’s why you gotta enjoy the human things,” Garth says. “Eat food that tastes good, sleep on comfortable mattresses, invest in a bidet.” When Cas doesn’t respond he adds, “You don’t have any choice in living, so you may as well make the best of it.” 

Cas looks back down at his food, a soggy cheeseburger he had ordered more out of habit than anything else. Normally, it’s Dean who eats the food Cas orders at restaurants, so he hadn’t even thought twice about it when his gaze automatically fell on the burger section of the menu. 

“Tell you what,” Garth says. “After we finish eating we’ll go to the grocery store and you can pick some food out that you want. It’ll make being human a little bit better.” 

They finish lunch and pay. On their way out, Garth grabs some potato chips sold in faux-antique packaging and chats pleasantly with the cashier as she rings them up. 

He’s relaxed in a way the Winchesters never are. In a way that may serve him normally, but won’t now while Cas is Heaven’s most wanted and riding shotgun in his rusted car. 

He has the same thought when they’re standing in the grocery store. It’s teeming with customers; Garth parks himself in front of a shelf of nut butters and doesn’t flinch or look up when someone steps a little too close to them. Cas triple checks that he can feel the warm metal of his angel blade in his sleeve.

“I appreciate the help you’ve given me,” Cas says while Garth is leaning forward to contemplate a jar of peanut butter and jelly blend, “But I think it would be safer for you if I left.” 

He looks up at that. “Pardon?” 

“The longer I’m with you, the more danger you’re in,” Cas explains in a hushed tone. “The angels want me, and they won’t hesitate to… eliminate anything or anyone who gets in their way.” 

“And you think being by yourself is safer?” 

Cas doesn’t answer. He doesn’t, of course, but putting just himself in danger is better than dragging Garth down along with him. 

(That’s why he’s standing here, anyway. Dean hadn’t said it outright, but Cas couldn’t think of any other reason he’d be pawning Cas off to another hunter like this. 

Well, he didn’t  _ want _ to think of any other reasons.)

“I wouldn’t have agreed to help you out if it would be a burden,” Garth says when Cas doesn’t answer right away. “And I don’t scare easy, either. You need help and I’m offering, don’t be an idjit.”

The inorganic way in which he says the word makes Cas take pause. His mouth pauses, open but unmoving, and Garth takes the time to ask,

“Do you have any food allergies?” 

Cas furrows his brow and stares at the jar Garth is holding. “I... don’t know.” 

“My cousin— Liz— can’t eat any kind of nuts. She ate a Reese’s when she was twelve and ended up in the hospital for a week.” 

“I’ve had peanuts?” Cas offers, and Garth drops the jar in the hand basket. He grabs a jar of jelly, and throws it in there, too. 

Randomly, Cas thinks of Sam telling him that pure oxygen is dangerous to humans. It negates the body’s ability to carry it in the blood, and it clogs the lungs. And Sam had explained it, so casually, while sipping his coffee. 

“Humans die so easily,” Cas remarks at noon, on a Wednesday, in the middle of the cereal aisle. “The things that are supposed keep you alive can kill you.”

Garth claps him on the shoulder and says, “That’s what makes life so special.” 

Life  _ is  _ special, Cas knows this. He’d seen it born, from the first organism, to the dinosaurs, to the fish that had pulled itself out of the water onto the rocky shore. He knew it because he’d seen people happy— seen Dean bang a drum solo out onto the Impala’s steering wheel, and seen videos of animals curling up against other animals, and seen a man reach over and zip his girlfriend’s jacket up further when she shivered. 

But observing life, in all its loving intricacies, is not the same as living. Understanding people doesn’t make it any easier to know that they are going to die. 

Garth asks, “Do you like bagels?” And the existential spell is broken. 

“Yes,” Cas says. “The rasin ones.” 

They finish making their way around the store and load their bags into the trunk of the car.

—

Garth is in the middle of a story about a demon he exorcised when the his phone starts ringing. Without looking away from the road, he fishes it out of the cup holder and answers it. 

“You’ve got Garth... Sheriff Mills, hey. What can I do ya for?” He sets his lips into a frown as he listens. “Were their hearts missing? Yep, that’s a werewolf. Alright, what you’re gonna do is get yourself some silver bullets. Aim for the heart. And, Sheriff… Werewolves tend to travel in packs. Keep an eye out. If you need, I can send someone up to help you if you-- Well if you change your mind, you know where to find me… Alright, you too. Keep me posted.”

He hangs up and tosses his phone back into the cup holder. 

“Anyway-- what was I saying?” And then he continues.

\--

They step into the entryway and Garth pauses, grocery bags in hand, to toe his shoes off. Then he looks at Cas expectantly. “If you don’t mind…” He nods down at the pile of shoes beside the door. “It just keeps the floor cleaner.”

Cas follows suit and kneels down to untie his sneakers. He takes the time to look around.

Garth’s house is an amalgamation of hunter and what Cas figures would be considered normal. There is, for example, a rug at every entrance that covers a devil’s trap, and salt lines at the windows, and there are even guns tucked up in drawers. It all juxtaposes the lamps, and the DVD collection, and the worn-in, comfortable feeling that the bunker and motel rooms never quite capture. 

The places Sam and Dean stay are in a constant state of liminality. They’re revolving doors with matching bedspreads and unpacked bags. And the bunker, relatively unchanged by them moving-in, feels more like an inherited relic than anything else. 

Garth’s home feels the way Cas supposes a home is supposed to feel. Somebody lives here and he can tell from the divets in the couch cushions, and the photos on the mantle, and the well-stocked cabinets that they plan to stay a while. 

“Alright.” Garth cracks his knuckles dramatically, and the sound is drowned out by the swooshing of plastic bags. “The grand tour. The living room—“ He motions his arm toward the couch and the television over the mantle. “Remote’s on the coffee table. Upstairs are the bedrooms and the bathrooms, and then here’s—“ he pauses in the kitchen. “Where the magic happens.” 

\--

Cas discovers early on that Garth is doing the same thing as him, piecing life together from all the people around him. A lot of his research used to be Bobby’s— files that had been stored away after he died. 

There’s an organized chaos to Garth. His life is messy, but never dirty. His bookshelves are crammed full, but there’s a method to them that Garth seems to understand, because he can find any tome within seconds. 

He has a line of phones in his kitchen, too, like the ones Bobby had, with labels scrawled across them— FBI, animal control, homeland security. 

“Things got messy without Sam and Dean around,” He explains as he peels potatoes into the sink. “And with Bobby dead I figured, y’know, why not step up? So I got ahold of as many of his contacts as I could and offered to help out.” 

“You think it’s your responsibility,” Cas says. He’s pulling the papery skin off of an onion and trying to blink away the sting in his eye. 

Garth shrugs. “No.” He hands the potatoes to Cas to cut up. “But I don’t mind doing it. We’re all better together, y’know?” 

\--

Cas doesn’t like the night very much. Before, when he was an angel, there was an inherent loneliness to being the only one awake. Now he has to deal with the slings and arrows of sleeping. 

There’s the time wasted, of course. Humans spend a third of their lives asleep, and they’ll never get those comatose hours back. 

And there’s also the dreams. Of Heaven, mostly, turned into a sprawling graveyard of his brothers and sisters. Sometimes Dean, too, and those are the worst ones. He wakes up and still feels the sting in his knuckles and the weak give of a blade into flesh. 

Betrayal has a flavor, and most mornings he wakes up to it coating his mouth. Mouthwash never quite manages to cleanse him. 

He doesn’t blame Dean for sending him away. He’s a target, a beacon even with the warding tattooed across his side. The angels are angry, and scared, and Cas knows he can’t fault them for finding vindication in wanting him dead. The spell for falling angels is paved with good intentions. 

Understanding, however, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. 

(“I’m gonna get you set up with Garth,” Dean said as he haphazardly tossed clothes into a duffel bag. “He might not seem it, but he’s a good hunter. And he’s a good guy.” 

It had all happened fast enough for Cas to be stuck without a reply. Dean had entered the study, and then Cas was standing in the doorway of his room, still holding a half-eaten burrito while Dean packed him a go-bag of flannels. 

He held the bag out, and Cas took it. Their hands brushed. 

“There’s a credit card in there,” Dean said. “You’ve got your angel blade?” 

He nodded stiffly. 

“Great,” Dean said, and they headed for the exit. Cas didn’t miss how Dean cautiously looked around corners before they rounded them. 

Just as Cas reached for the door handle, Dean’s voice made him pause.

“And Cas—“ Dean looked up at him from the bottom of the staircase. “Call me if you need me.”

Cas thought, like a prayer,  _ I need you now.) _

Cas wakes up, safe, in Garth’s guest room with the morning sun peeking in around the angel warding painted on the window.    
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come talk to me on Tumblr @queenofmoons !


End file.
